C1 Downloads Images Fixed + Status Update

First things first: If you've looked at the C1 Downloads page lately, you might have noticed that most of the images read "Please upgrade your Photobucket account to enable third-party hosting" instead of actually showing what the breeds looked like.

Rather than deal with this questionable business decision, I opted to just reupload the images via Blogger's natural image uploading function. Now all the images should display properly.

Originally that was all that was going to be here, but I figured I might as well say a few things about my current frame of mind concerning Creatures.

And that, sadly, is that it's completely unchanged from before. My motivation for Creatures-related things is still zero, and for mostly the same reasons. So chances are the silence here is going to remain, though I'll still do my best to make sure all my stuff remains available in this era of dying Creatures websites.

While I'm here, I figured I might as well advertise Pilla's Discord Server, the Caos Coding Cave. I hopped in there a while back, and while it's been just as quiet as the rest of the community (which I'm really not helping much) I haven't really regretted it.

It is worth mentioning it's aimed at Creatures development, though. For non-developing people there's the Norn Nebula server, which I don't have a link to. I haven't joined that server, for reasons I'm not stating in public.

That's all for now. Until the next one, folks.

Silence...And an Eventual Return?

It seems like every passing year I post here less and less. Compare my posts during the first year of my blog's existence, and then look at the posts for the following years. Heck, I haven't made a proper post since September (well, excluding that Creatchi rant that I deleted some time ago; it turns out I was worrying about nothing after all and I felt it was a little a too harsh in light of that). The Featured Freak's been ongoing, but beyond that it's just been really quiet here. 

It's mostly because I've just been in a rut lately. Besides the fact that other things have been more interesting (Xenoblade Chronicles especially; I've been playing that game practically nonstop for a couple weeks now), my attempts for developing just haven't been going well. Every attempt at making a genetic breed has just been devolving into a GoM ripoff, for instance. 

Thinking about it now, developing probably is taking a lot out of me. While I doubt I'll ever stop tinkering with genetics or CAOs, the full blown projects take quite a bit of work (especially with my new standards) and oftentimes I wind up with something I'm not happy with. 

The alternative is simply to just play the game, and I've been doing just that. However, setting up a world is still a massive pain thanks to my finicky habits; it seems like every world that I don't end up deleting is just focused on the Meso and nowhere else. 

So what is my plan now? Option 1 is simply to play a different game other than C3/DS; I still have my C1 grendel world and after looking back on the first four updates I posted about it I think continuing it after leaving it alone for so long might be good. I may or may not post updates about it should I start it up again, however; like I mentioned back when I started it I really don't like having to pause the world and take pictures for a post, even if I do like the final result. 

The second option is to focus my development efforts on something less extensive. One thing I've been considering making is a spritemix; that is, creatures who do not have unique sprites or a unique genome, but instead simply opt for an interesting appearance (usually through a combination of colors and a mixture of sprites from various different breeds, hence the term "sprite-mix"). It's been something I've been wanting to try making for a while. 

In addition, I've also been considering just making packs of colored creatures, which while not very original does provide a good amount of variety for other people's worlds. If nothing else, it'd give people some CFE versions of otherwise non-CFE breeds to play with. 

Whatever the case, I should probably try to post here more often. 

To end things off, most are probably aware that the CCSF 2014 is back in action after technical difficulties killed it for a while. I'm not expecting a whole lot out of it since it took a while to get planned, but what's been released so far has been pretty nifty even if it isn't huge. That being said, you can expect at least one big release; against all the odds I managed to get out a metaroom - a complete metaroom at that, not an empty place like the initial Deep Abyss or Aquanornia Revamped were. I'm rather proud of it too, so I hope you'll enjoy it whenever it gets released. Not to mention my version of the Spam Norns was released on Day 1. I'll be posting my CCSF stuff here once the festival's over, as I did with last year's and the year before that. 

Secondly, depending on how things go I might actually be able to get out a bonus release before the festival's over; I am working on a breed now and so far it's coming along swimmingly (if for no other reason than that one big thing that kept bothering me for past projects, the idea to keep the breed as close to the official breeds as possible, is a non-issue since among other things it makes heavy use of an unknownase chemical). Failing that the next Featured Freak should be up soon. 

As a matter of fact, I was going to post a tutorial about something, but I decided to post this status update instead since the introduction was getting a bit like that. That should hopefully be up soon; I just need to take some pictures first. 

Until the next one, folks.

Status Update

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I've gone back to being on hiatus again, for the usual reasons (lack of interest, reality's getting in the way, etc.) As such, I feel I should probably say something about the state of my projects.

First off: The Sea Garden. I'm sorry to say that, due to a combination of various factors, that it's not going to be done in time for the CCSF. Shades of Past Seas and the 2010 CCSF, I guess. Instead, I'm planning on getting it out for Christmas at the latest.

The pack of genetic breeds that was supposed to go along with it is getting canned. In their place is a single genetic breed that follows the same theme. The replacement breed is in fact almost done; I just need to add one more feature to them and color them in.

In place of the Sea Garden, I've two metaroom updates planned.

One of them is for Past Seas. I've found the lift doesn't tell creatures using it to wait. While this isn't a really big problem since the lift only has two stops, I figured I might as well fix it to stop creatures from pushing/pulling the lift multiple times upon reaching their destination. In addition, I also want to fix the Eelgrass (again) to remove instances of the teleporting plant bug. Finally, I'm also planning on buffing the lifeforms so that they reproduce faster when their populations are low.

The other one is for Jennie's Aquanornia. While we do have Devil's Reef and Past Seas for non-swimming creatures, the former is a bit too thematic and the latter's rather small. Aquanornia, on the other hand, is both sizable and pretty generic for an aquatic area. As such, I've taken it upon myself to fix a few problems with it; such as the lack of CA/CA links and especially the fact that it didn't work with DS standalone (you'll still need C3 installed to use it, though). I also removed most of the C3 life that was originally in it, so now it's essentially an aquatic Biodome. I'm more or less finished with this one - I just need to compile the agent file and it's ready to go.

The final project is a few aquatic Garden Box agents, especially the Gumin Grass conversion that I originally lacked ideas for. In addition, I'm planning on converting some C2 stuff, some lifeforms from Aquatilis Caverna, and all the Past Seas lifeforms.

Apologies to anyone who expected the Sea Garden, but hopefully everything else that I'm releasing should help mitigate that issue somewhat.

This Silence is Boring.

By now, I can happily say that I'm not going to be on hiatus any time soon. I've finally gotten the state of the Creatures install on my new computer close to where it originally was on my old one. I just need to install the map editor and find some way to get the GIMP Plugins and MNG Tools working and I'll be golden as far as development goes.

Only problem: where the heck is the rest of the community?

None of the main blogs have gotten new posts in months, CCaves is dead silent apart from a few newbies and will probably remain so until the revamp goes online, and it doesn't seem CTopia is any closer to getting out of the rut it's been in for the last year or so. One would think summer would be the peak of activity in a community like this, and yet it's the opposite. Either this summer is particularly busy for some reason (I know there's some people who are moving), or everyone's enjoying the break while it lasts. I envy that latter group - not having a social life outside the internet hurts sometimes.

I've heard that the best way to encourage activity is to be active, so I might as well make this blog interesting for the CC members who are just as bored as I am. So, I've decided to take some suggestions.

Is there anything you would like to see happen here? Interested in seeing a wolfling/feral run get documented? A few tidbits about projects such as the Flesheaters? CAOS/Genetics tutorials? Or heck, even a genetic breed/agent (that doesn't require new sprites) you'd like to see made? I'm open to all sorts of ideas.

In case you're wondering about some projects, I'm holding off on doing anything about the Sea Garden until I get the GIMP problem fixed, since trying to use the Sprite Builder for this sort of thing is both tedious and tends to create rainbow spew, and I'm not too convinced about Edos being a worthy substitute. No, it's not cancelled. On the other hand, I've finally come up with some sort of direction for the Sea Monsters V2 beyond "generic amphibious grendel breed" (they absorbed some features of the Merrow Grendels, which I briefly mentioned in a past post). Stay tuned - I'll probably talk more about the sea monsters in future posts.